


A Time for Wolves

by ariel2me



Series: Drabble/Ficlet Collection [24]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2018-10-15 21:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 9,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10557816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariel2me/pseuds/ariel2me
Summary: A collection of House Stark drabbles and ficlets.Chapter 15: Alaric Stark/the unnamed Mormont Lady Stark





	1. Chapter 1

**Lyanna** **Stark & Benjen Stark, tears**

 

>   _The dragon prince sang a song so sad it made the wolf maid sniffle, but when her pup brother teased her for crying she poured wine over his head. (A Storm of Swords)_
> 
> _By night the prince played his silver harp and made her weep. When she had been presented to him, Cersei had almost drowned in the depths of his sad purple eyes. He has been wounded, she recalled thinking, but I will mend his hurt when we are wed. (A Feast for Crows)_

Later, after he had cleaned himself up and changed the damp clothing stained with the red wine she had poured over his head, Ben would ask, mystified, “Why did you cry, Lya? Those three southron ladies sitting at the next table to ours in the hall, the ones who also cried, they talked about his pain and his sorrow, about wanting to heal his wounded heart. _What wounded heart?_ I wanted to ask. He’s a prince. He’ll be king one day. He’s a prince more beloved by the realm than his lord father the current king. What wounded heart? And yet they say … but surely you’re not like that, Lya? Surely that’s not why you cried? You’re … well, you’re _Lya_. You’re my _sister_. You wouldn’t shed tears for that.”

“I was not crying for _him_ , you _fool_ ,” Lyanna replied, raising her wine goblet high, as if threatening to empty its content over her brother’s head again.

“Then who were you crying for?”

 “I was crying for myself. His song … it reminded me of –“

 _Of my own sorrow._ _Of my own wounded heart._

“It reminds you of you? But isn’t that what _all_ singers do? They make you believe they are singing about you, about you and only you, and about no one else, even when they know nothing about you, truly. You were the one who said this, Lya, the one who told me this.”

“I know, Ben. I know that is what they do. But it … it has never … it –“

“It has never worked on you before?”

“And I don’t know why it is different, this time.” She laughed, the sound a bitter draught, before adding, “I’m a fool."

“You’re not!” Ben replied, heatedly. Then, after a pause, he asked, “Do you hate it so much, the thought of being the Lady of Storm’s End?”

“It is not about Storm’s End.”

“It is about the man,” Ben stated, not asked.

The man they had seen beating one lord or knight after another in endless wine-cup wars, whose hands had groped, grabbed, tickled and slapped countless female bosoms and backsides throughout the night, who did not seem to care that the woman he was betrothed to was sitting in the same hall, watching him with eyes wide open.  

“He will love me, Ned said. Love, and marriage, will change him, Ned claimed.”

“Ned is a _fool_ when it comes to his foster brother.”              

 

* * *

 

 **Lyanna** **Stark & Lyarra Stark, fear**

 _Lya_ _, don’t. Do not do this, child. Do not choose this path. It will not bring you joy._

She does not hear, of course. How could you hear the whispers of the dead?

 _You married for love, Mother. How much joy have you had of that?_ Lyarra had asked her mother, another lifetime ago.

 _You married not for love, Mother. How much joy did you have of that?_ Lyanna never had the chance to ask her mother.

The answer, according to their daughters, would have been the same for Arya Flint and Lyarra Stark: very little joy.

 _You must be careful, Lyarra. You must be careful that you are not making a grave mistake of your own while trying so hard not to repeat what you see as your mother's mistake. You must be careful that you are not choosing an even more treacherous path because you are so intent on avoiding the path I once chose,_ Arya Flint had warned her daughter.

 _I’m afraid, Mother. I’m afraid of losing myself the way you did. I’m afraid of love that turns to indifference, to bitterness, to hatred,_ Lyarra had thought, but never had the courage to confide to her mother.

 _I’m afraid, Mother. I’m afraid of being trapped in a cage the way you were. I’m afraid of civility that turns to cold courtesy, to dutiful embrace, to endless silence,_ Lyanna wished she could have confided to  _her_  mother.

_I’m afraid, Lya. I’m afraid that you are about to commit a grave mistake of your own, because you are so intent on not repeating your mother’s._

 

* * *

 

 **Lyanna** **Stark and Rickard Stark, tell me**

I let you run wild, they say.  _That poor, motherless Stark girl._ _Her father lets her run wild._

What nonsense they speak, these chattering harpies, these creatures of court. There is no 'running wild' about expecting you to know how to handle a horse as deftly as your brothers, for one. You are a daughter of the north after all, not a fragile, delicate southron lady expecting always to be carried with pomp and grandeur on a litter or a wheelhouse. When your brother's betrothed finally comes north from Riverrun, she will have to learn -

I can hear you laughing, Lya. I can hear your gentle but firm chiding.  _They are not all the same, Father, these southron ladies, just like northern ladies are not all the same. We are not coins made to order, each minted no different than others of the same value._

 _Oh? And how are you different, pray tell me?_ I asked you, in jest.

 _I want to travel, to roam the world from one end to another, like my grandsire the Wandering Wolf_ , you replied, equally in jest, I believed.

A sword, Lya? Surely you know better, child. And certainly not a sword in lieu of marriage. A knight errant? A fool's errand is more like it.

_It is cruel, Father. It is cruel to allow me little glimpses of the whole wide world, only to shut the door so decisively._

Was that what he promised you, Lya, with his silver tongue and his silver harp? Did he promise you more than just a glimpse of the whole wide world?

Tell me he forced your hand, Lya.

Or tell me he took the hand you offered willingly.

Tell me he lied to you, Lya, lied to you and made a mockery of his words and his promises.

Or tell me he kept every single one of them.

Tell me something,  _anything_.

Or tell me nothing, if you wish, my just punishment for hearing but never really listening.

Only ...

Tell me you are  _alive_ , Lya.

Tell me I will not have to bury a child. 


	2. Chapter 2

When they handed her the babe, and she saw that he was not a girl, the first thing Lyanna said was, “Rhaegar would have been disappointed.”

Arthur Dayne looked up with surprise. “Prince Rhaegar would have been overjoyed with the birth of his son, my lady.”  

_You know nothing. You know nothing about your prince, you stupid, stupid fool._

She had known nothing too, when she took Rhaegar’s hand and fled with him. She had mistaken need for love, obsession for desire.  

_He wanted me!_

He wanted a broodmare to bear him a daughter, another Visenya to complete the holy trinity and fulfill his precious prophecy.

_I wanted him._

She wanted to break free from the shackles of a life received; a life determined and bound from cradle to grave, a prison she could never escape. She had believed him to be a kindred spirit, a fellow prisoner, desperately yearning for the freedom that often seemed tantalizingly close, but _always_ , _always_ , out of reach.

And now here she was, in a true prison, a prisoner to Rhaegar’s Kingsguard, men loyal still to their dead prince.

And there he was, dead and bloodied at the Trident, without a Visenya to make a third head for his dragon.

She wondered if that had been his last thought, or perhaps even his last words. _Visenya_ _._ _My precious Visenya._

Wages of sin, some would call it. Payment for all the bloodshed and the deaths. They deserved worse, some would say, the both of them.

 _Our child deserves better._ An innocent, who could no more choose his father and mother than he could choose the moment of his birth.

“Let me go to my brother,” Lyanna demanded of Arthur Dayne, before her child was born, when she had strength still to stay on her feet.

“Your brother fights for Robert Baratheon. What do you think they would do to a child of Prince Rhaegar?”

“Ned fights for our murdered father and our murdered brother!”

“Even so, my lady.“

“Then find me a ship. I will go to the Free Cities. No one will need be troubled by me or by my child ever again.”

The Free Cities. That was where she had been led to believe they were heading, she and Rhaegar, when she took his hand and relinquished everything else. A new life, a new beginning, away from those who would seek to imprison them in a gilded cage.

 _Fool! I was a fool._ She had thought herself brave and resourceful, but in truth, she had been a foolish child playing a foolish game, steered by a dark prince playing a darker game.

“We swore an oath to Prince Rhaegar, to stay at Tower of Joy and protect you and the child you are carrying. Do you think my sworn brothers and I would not rather be by Prince Rhaegar’s side, fighting this war?”

“I’m sure you would. And you should do so, immediately. Let me go, and then you can go to your precious prince.”

“No, my lady. I will not betray my oath. I cannot!”

“What do you think King Aerys would do to my child? A child with Stark blood, traitor’s blood in his eyes.”

Arthur Dayne looked uneasy. “The king would welcome his grandchild.”

A lie, and Arthur Dayne knew it too, Lyanna surmised from the way he quickly turned his head away, unable to sustain the weight of her accusing gaze.


	3. Chapter 3

“What is this place? Why are we here?”

“It is where we must stay. For a while. Until … well, only for a little while."

“Stay? But why? You said .,. you said we are to sail immediately to the Free Cities. You _promised._ ”

“Our plans have changed, Lyanna.”

 _Lyanna._ Not Lya. Never Lya. How she had loved this, in the beginning.

“I never agreed to this change of plan.”

“There is something I must do, before we leave. You must have faith in me.”

He never spoke of ' _must'_ before. He spoke of choices. He spoke of choosing instead of merely accepting. He spoke of taking charge of their own lives instead of blindly following the path determined by others.

“And what will I do, where will I be, while you are doing this thing you have to do?”

“You will be here. With me.”


	4. Chapter 4

_She had no thought of playing the doomed romantic heroine. She became that only later, in the frame of her own outcome and thus in the minds of her admirers. In the course of daily life she was frequently irritating, like anyone. Or dull. Or joyful, she could be that as well: given the right conditions, the secret of which was known only to her, she could drift off into a kind of rapture. (The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood)_

* * *

 

“Prince Rhaegar loved his Lady Lyanna, and the realm bled for it, and thousands died for it.”

The first time Benjen heard those words was on his first week at the Wall, before he even knew the names of most of his black brothers. The speaker had fought at the Trident for Rhaegar Targaryen, had been taken prisoner after Rhaegar's army was defeated, and was sent to the Wall after Robert Baratheon ascended the throne.

“Shut up!” Benjen had shouted. “You know nothing, you stupid fool. You know _nothing_. Don't you _dare_ blame her.”

“What is it to you, boy?” the man replied, twice Benjen's age and almost twice his size, staring at him menacingly, preparing to strike. Another black brother whispered, “It's the Stark boy.”

The first speaker said, “I'm not blaming your sister, lad. It is a sad story. A tragic story. A doomed love affair between a pair of star-crossed lovers, no matter what lies that usurper on the throne is telling.”

His friend pulled the speaker away, furiously whispering, “That boy's brother is King Robert's foster brother. Are you so keen to lose your head?”

In King's Landing, Robert Baratheon had paid singers to sing the song of the brave but doomed Lady Lyanna, raped and defiled by the evil Prince Rhaegar.

And here at the Wall was a former (or perhaps not so former) Targaryen loyalist, blathering on and on about the doomed love affair between Lady Lyanna and Prince Rhaegar.

 _Doomed. Doomed._ The word echoed inside Benjen's skull.

_What have they done to you, Lya? These people who know nothing about you. They have turned you into … into …._

Into something that resembled his sister very little. She was important to them for the tragic manner of her death, not for her life. Her _meaning_ to them came only through her death, not her life.

_Do you miss me, Ben?_

He missed the look of outrage on her face, when he cheated at some game or another they were playing, cheated not really for the joy of winning, but more to hear her shouting, _It's not fair! Not fair. You take that back, Ben!_

He missed the long, dull days at Winterfell when Father was away on some lordly business, when nothing seemed to be happening and they would stare at each other in silence, bored out of their skulls, until some thought of mischief finally entered one of their heads and the other would demand, impatient and ferocious with excitement, _Tell me, tell me, tell me._

He missed her conspiratorial whisper in the godswood, _Don't tell Father, don't tell Father,_ as her sword slashed away at his. He missed the gleam in her eyes, equal parts anticipation, concentration and ecstasy, as she planned and made her next move. He missed her scornful look of disbelief when he claimed that he had let her win on purpose, that she had not truly defeated him. He even missed being irritated by her truly justified scornful look of disbelief.

He missed the mundane more than he missed the supposedly profound, the unremarkable day-to-day reality of the sister whose presence and existence he should not have taken for granted.

He missed _Lya_ , not the doomed victim or the doomed lover they paid homage to in songs and stories.


	5. Chapter 5

“I don't _want_ to hear another story. I want to go riding.”

“I know a story about a girl who hated stories,” Old Nan said, smiling her toothless smile.

“Tell me a story about my mother.”

“There was once a girl called Lya. She -”

“Not about _me_. About my mother.”

“Hush, child. There was once a girl called Lya. She dreamed of living in a castle where everything was just so, where everything was nice and pleasant and beautiful, where everything was in its right and proper place, where fathers did not leave for years and years before returning home only to dream of leaving again, and mothers did not wither into a husk of bitterness and sorrow. She -”

“She married a prince and lived happily ever after. I hate that kind of stories, Nan, you _know_ I do.”

“She grew up and married her cousin.”

“Her _cousin_? So this _is_ a story about my mother.”

“It's a story about a girl called Lya,” Old Nan insisted, with a straight face.

“She grew up and had a little girl also called Lya,” Lyanna added, with a wink.

Old Nan maintained her straight-faced expression. “ _This_ Lya was a stubborn little girl. More stubborn and willful than her mother. She wanted to go riding even during a snowstorm. She fell from her horse, broke her leg and - ”

“And had to listen to _endless_ stories about a girl called Lya. _I'm_ not going to fall from any horse. I'm a better rider than Ben. Better than even Ned. Only Brandon is better than me, but only for a little while longer. I'm going to be better than him too, you just wait and see, Nan.”

“That's what the girl called Lya said, before her fall. She broke one leg and both her arms, and it was almost a year before she could mount a horse again.”

Lyanna put her hands over her ears. “Not listening. I'm not listening.” She bounded out of the room, heading for the stables. At the door, she paused and said, “When I return, will you tell me more stories about my … about the girl called Lya? The _first_ Lya, the one who dreamed of living in a castle.”


	6. Chapter 6

Lyanna studied the sculpted feature of Cregan Stark. There were no statues of his wives, _any_ of his wives, accompanying him. Winterfell's crypt was only meant for kings and lords, not for their consorts.

“He looks … lonely,” Lyanna remarked.

Benjen laughed. “He's dead, Lya. The dead can't be lonely.”

Couldn't they? Then why did she often dream of her mother being lonely?

“Wasn't he the one with three wives?” Benjen asked.

Lyanna nodded.

“Imagine that. _Three_ wives!”

Lyanna scoffed. “Not three wives at the same time, silly. We are Starks, not Targaryens, remember? He was married to three different women at different times, and he outlived them all.”

“Which one do you think he missed the most?”

“Missed the most? So the dead can't be lonely, but they can miss their wives? What _are_ the rules for the dead, Ben?” Lyanna teased her brother. “Can they be angry, or sad, or hungry? Can they miss riding a horse, or beating their brother at swordplay?”

“Now _you're_ being silly, Lya. You know what I mean. On his deathbed, say. Which wife do you think he thought of the most, when he was dying?”

“All three of them equally, I should hope,” Lyanna said.

“He _must_ have a favorite. The wife he loved the most. The Blackwood one, probably. That was a love match, wasn't it?”

“On _his_ side. Who knows what _she_ really thought of the matter,” Lyanna replied. “Alysanne. Her name was Alysanne,” she added, her voice almost a whisper. “Why do you think _she_ did it, Ben? Why do you think she offered herself to him in marriage?”

“She? Who?”

“Who else? Black Aly. Alysanne Blackwood. Cregan Stark's second wife. Corlys Velaryon was not _her_ grandfather. Corlys Velaryon had granddaughters of his own. Corlys Velaryon was a stranger to her. Why would she marry The Old Man of the North so Corlys Velaryon could keep his pardon and his offices and his honors?”

Benjen shrugged. “Maybe she just wanted to be the Lady of Winterfell.”

“And that is a good enough reason?”

“It is a great honor, to be the Lady of Winterfell,” Benjen said, solemnly.

 _It is a great honor, to be the Lady of Storm's End,_ her father had said, even more solemnly, and insistently.

Benjen was staring at her, looking very uneasy. “No one _made_ her do it, Lya. She wasn't forced to marry him. She wasn't dragged to Winterfell in chains.”

 _Oh Ben, there are many ways of forcing that do not involve any kind of chains or shackles or fetters,_ Lyanna thought, but could not bear to say to her younger brother. _And some chains could not be seen with the naked eyes, but we feel them nonetheless, and cannot escape them all the same._

“She didn't even have a father to tell her who to marry. Her _nephew_ was Lord Blackwood at the time, and wasn't he only a young boy? Could you see _him_ forcing his aunt to marry a man she didn't want to marry?” Benjen continued.

She _chose_. Black Aly chose to wed Cregan Stark. Whatever her reasons and motivations were, she at least had the chance to _choose_ ; Lyanna so desperately wanted to believe this.


	7. Chapter 7

>   _That Torrhen Stark’s daughter was wed to the young and ill-fated Lord of the Vale is well-known; it was one of the many peace-binding marriages forged by Rhaenys. But there are letters preserved at the Citadel suggesting that Stark accepted these arrangements only after much protest, and that the bride’s brothers refused to attend the wedding entirely. (The World of Ice and Fire)_

Her father's hand holding her own was  _cold_ , icy cold. “It will be over soon,” Berena whispered, giving his hand a squeeze.

The ceremony would be over, true enough, but for Berena, the ordeal was just beginning.

Her father had the same thought. “It will not be over for you. You will be married to this  _boy_  half your age.”

Not  _truly_ half her age, but almost. Berena Stark was seven-and-ten, and Ronnel Arryn only ten.

“I wanted a  _man_  for you. A man of the North. A man brave and strong, worthy of my only daughter, my beloved daughter. Not this green boy of the Vale the dragons have forced on us. I wanted a loyal ally of the Starks for you, not this young lord whose ancestors have been enemies of the North for too many generations to count.”

More than a hundred battles had been fought between the North and the Vale, in the thousand-year struggle over the Three Sisters. But what Torrhen Stark considered a grave impediment to the match, Rhaenys Targaryen considered its reason for being.

 _This is the match that will bind and unite the realm as one_ , she had repeated, in letters after letters replying to Lord Stark's strenuous objection to the marriage.

 _Peace, and unity_ , preached the dragons, who had conquered the Seven Kingdoms by less than peaceful means themselves.

There was a smile on Rhaenys' face, and Aegon's too. Aegon's other queen, the one who subdued the Vale, had a grim set to her mouth, not unlike the grim looks on the faces of the wedding party from the North. The groom himself, the boy king who flew and landed a little lord, looked completely untroubled. He was grinning, as if the wedding was yet another grand and exciting adventure. Not surprising, perhaps, coming from the same boy who had mistakenly believed that Visenya's offer to let him ride her dragon was a boon and blessing, instead of the threat that his mother had immediately recognized.

He seemed a sweet boy, but Berena did not  _want_  a sweet boy for a husband. She wanted a man, a man brave and strong, like her father.

 _He will grow_ , she willed herself to remember.  _He will not be a boy forever. He will grow to be a man, a man brave and strong, and the seven years between us will not seem such a gulf in ten years, or twenty years,_ she forced herself to believe.

The thought of  _twenty_ years in the Vale, twenty years away from Winterfell, away from her home in the North, was almost more than she could bear.

There was a stool at the altar, for Ronnel Arryn to climb so he could cloak his Stark bride with Arryn colors while standing head-to-head with her, if not toe-to-toe. Her brothers would have laughed, Berena thought, had they been here to witness the wedding, had they been here to see  _this_.

 _No_ , she decided, they would have been too furious even to laugh bitterly, or mockingly.

The same stool had been present in the godswood when the wedding ceremony according to the rites of the old gods had been performed earlier in the day. Torrhen Stark had insisted that his daughter be married according to the faith of the Starks before she was married according to the faith of her Arryn groom. Ronnel Arryn's regent, his mother the Lady Sharra, had reluctantly agreed to this demand, with the condition that the wedding must be held at the Eyrie, not at Winterfell.

 _The Eyrie boasts a godswood as well as a sept. Winterfell could not make the same claim,_  she wrote, in letters sent both to Torrhen Stark and to Rhaenys Targaryen,  _unless Lord Stark would deign to have a sept built in his castle, and to have it completed before the wedding._

 _A 'godswood' without a heart tree does not deserve to be called a godswood. It is a garden, nothing more, and that is what you have at the Eyrie,_ wrote Torrhen Stark, in his caustic reply.  _No daughter of mine will be wed in a mere garden._

Rhaenys Targaryen proposed a compromise. The wedding would be held not at the Eyrie, but at the Arryn's winter castle, the Gates of the Moon. Its godswood, with a weirwood heart tree, was  _not_  a mere garden, and this was where Berena Stark and Ronnel Arryn were first joined in matrimony.

 _Ronnel of House Arryn. I claim her._ The groom's declaration sounded more like a boy claiming his toy than a man claiming his bride.

 _Torrhen of House Stark. I give her._ The reluctance of the bride's father was clear to all, from the way he gritted his teeth and clenched his jaw as he made this proclamation.

 _Will you take this … man?_ Lord Stark had paused, for a long, long while, before completing the question to his daughter, seemingly unable to force the word ' _man_ ' out of his mouth. He managed to spit it out nonetheless, in the end.

 _I take this man._ Berena rushed through her reply, willing herself not to think, not to  _feel_ , not to scream in fury and frustration.

_I must say it. I must say it, or my father's work would have been all for naught._

_Call your banners,_ her brothers had demanded of their father, when Torrhen Stark's protests and objections to the Stark-Arryn match had all failed.  _Call your banners and we will fight the dragons to the last man and woman, as we should have done before. As you should have done, Father, instead of kneeling, instead of sinking our honor to this depth of depravity. We should have fought, and fought to the death if need be. Death is not an enemy to be feared by a Stark; you were the one who taught us that._

 _It was not my own life I feared for! I knelt to save the life of my people. Your people. Our people,_ her father had replied.  _The injury to my own honor, or to my pride, is nothing compared to the death and destruction the dragons could have brought to them. You would do well to remember this, when it is your turn to rule,_  he said, adamantly, without hesitation, seemingly without regret.

He  _was_ , however, assailed by feelings of guilt towards his daughter.  _Did I do wrong, Berena?_ he asked her, when they were finally alone.  _Did I force you into this path? The King Who Knelt, and now his daughter must also kneel -_

 _They are my people too, Father, the ones whose lives you were trying to save by kneeling, whose lives you did save,_ she had replied.  _There is no shame or dishonor in what you did. It took more strength and courage than most men could have mustered, to do what you did._

_We may have knelt, Father, but we will keep our heads held high, and not lower them in shame._


	8. Chapter 8

That one had a harp too. Bael the Bard who plucked the rose of Winterfell. Sygerrik of Skagos, he called himself. Sygerrik the deceiver, Sygerrik with his silver tongue and silver harp, though his hair was not silver like the prince deceiver's.

That one left a pale blue rose on the pillow of the Stark daughter he abducted, as if a flower was a fitting replacement for a lost child.

They also said that the rose of Winterfell loved Bael the Bard so much that she bore him a son, and threw herself from a tower in grief when that son slew Bael in battle. Lies! Lies, all of it. Brandon had always thought so, from the first time he heard that tall tale, that wildling revisionist history.

And now some people were trying to do the same to his sister, to tell a tall tale about Lyanna. Lies! Lies, all of it. Lyanna could not ...  _w_ _ould not_  … have gone willingly. She had flinched when Rhaegar crowned her with the garland of pale blue roses. She had not wanted it, had not wanted Rhaegar's hands touching her head, had not wanted his crown of flowers anywhere  _near_  her, had not wanted  _him_  anywhere by her side; Brandon had seen this clearly.

Winter rose. Pale blue rose. The flower she had loved and cherished most in the world … and now she could not think of it other than with shame. Rhaegar had  _ruined_  it for her, had spoiled what the blue winter rose meant to Lyanna, and Brandon could have strangled him for this alone.

_I'll come for you, Lya. I'll come for you now. I'll not wait a year like that other Brandon Stark waited a year for his daughter to return, to return with her abductor's child, with her raper's child. I'll find Rhaegar, find him and slay him with my own hands before he could do to you what Bael did to Brandon Stark's daughter._

“She had a name,” he suddenly remembered Lyanna saying. “She had a name, just like her father had a name, and the man who fathered her son had a name. Why didn't they sing  _her_ name? Why is she just the rose of Winterfell, or the maid, or Lord Stark's daughter, in those songs and stories?”

“We'll give her a name, then,” Brandon had replied. “Branda,” he declared. “Her name was Branda. Branda, daughter of Brandon. Or something else, Lya, if you prefer.  _We_  do not have to call her the rose of Winterfell.”

Lyanna sighed. “It does not change the fact that no one bothered to record or remember her real name.”


	9. Chapter 9

“Tell him he must not go,” Lord Arryn said, after Ned showed him Father’s letter. “Tell your father that he must not go to King’s Landing, not until he has mustered enough men to successfully attack the city.”

Ned paled. “Call his banners, you mean? Rebel against the king? My father would never –“

“Your father knows what must be done about Aerys. We have spoken of it before.”

“But that is different. A Great Council called with the approval of the heir to the throne is not the same thing as rebelling against the king, against a dynasty.”

“And where is that heir to the throne now? Gone, without a trace, like your sister. Your brother Brandon is all sorts of fools for behaving so recklessly, but what is done is done. Now we must strike. It will take time to call my own banners. Tell your father that he must  _wait,_ wait until all the forces are lined up.”

“The king summons him to come to King's Landing immediately, or Brandon … Brandon’s life will be forfeit. Father says he must answer for the crime of his son and heir. Anything else would be dishonorable.”

“Where is the honor in losing his head to the whims of a cruel and capricious tyrant, Ned?”

“It will not come to that, surely?”

“I fear it will, unless we can convince your father to wait.”

It was not  _honor_  foremost in his father's mind, no matter what Rickard Stark had written in his letter, Ned knew. It was a father's love. A father's desperate effort to save his child, another one of his children in danger. All his efforts to find Lyanna so far had been unsuccessful, and now Brandon … Brandon …

“He could not wait, not if it means that Brandon will die,” Ned said, uncertain if Jon Arryn would truly understand. This man he loved, this man who had been like a second father to him since he was eight, whose hands were currently on Ned's shoulders – he was not a father himself. His own nephew and heir Elbert was in the same predicament as Brandon, but the king had not summoned Jon Arryn to King's Landing, only the  _fathers_ of those young men he had accused of treason. Could Jon truly understand the choice Ned's father had to make at the moment?

Later, when the letter from Aerys came demanding the heads of Ned and Robert, and Jon Arryn did not hesitate for a moment before burning it and calling his banners, Ned would remember his previous doubt –  _secret_  doubt he had never shared with anyone, not even Robert – with remorse. You did not have to be the flesh-and-blood father of a child to be his or her  _father;_ that was the lesson he carried forward with him.


	10. Chapter 10

“The element of surprise will be our greatest advantage. They would not be expecting this,” Brandon explained his plan, while Torrhen listened carefully, without saying a word.

“What you are proposing is suicide,” Torrhen finally remarked. “You will not return alive. I will never see my brother again.”

“Do you have so little faith in me?”

“I have complete faith in your courage. I have no faith at all that dragons could be defeated with courage alone, even the most steadfast in the world.”

“You said yourself that if our army crosses the Trident, thousands will be slaughtered. This is the only way. Let me make this attempt. Even if I fail, only my life will be forfeited.”

“If you fail and your attempt is discovered, as it surely will, the dragons will cross the Trident before we could and unleash their fury, fire and vengeance on our army. The Field of Fire will become as nothing compared to that coming battle.”

“What, then? What other path is open to us?”

“You know what we must do. What  _I_  must do.”

“No!” exclaimed Brandon. He took a knee before his king, his liege. “Do not do this, I beg of you. The King in the North who fathered us both would never rest easy in Winterfell's crypt, if his one and only trueborn son were to become the  _last_  King in the North.”

“You do not find it so hard to bend  _your_  knee. Why must I find it impossible to bend mine?”

“I am bending my knee to my king! You would be bending your knee to an enemy, an enemy who wishes to destroy us, conquer us.”

“Is that not the point? For them  _not_  to destroy us. Rise, brother. You must cross the Trident tonight, but not for the purpose of making a futile attempt to slay the dragons while they sleep.”

“You are sending me across the river to bend my knee instead?”

“I am sending you across the river to negotiate satisfactory terms with this Aegon Targaryen, before I could bend  _my_ knee.”


	11. Chapter 11

**For the prompt: Catelyn Stark & Arya Stark, first steps.**

“Little Brandon was late to start walking as well,” Old Nan said to Catelyn, as they watched Arya crawl, making her way from her mother to the door, then back again, before beginning the cycle anew. “But once he did, he was almost as swift as the fastest horse in the stable,” Old Nan chuckled. “It was all I could do to keep up with him.”

It was all Catelyn could do to keep up with Arya now. She wanted to explore every dark corners and every darkened rooms in the castle, it seemed, and was determined to do it on her own two feet. Or on both hands and both feet, to be more precise. Walking, and running, she  _could_  be almost as swift as the fastest horse in the stable.

The thought filled Catelyn with pride, mingled with terror.

_No matter how tightly I hold her, I cannot keep her still, I cannot keep her in my embrace forever._

_The first step is the hardest_ , Lady Minisa had once said to her elder daughter. Not just for the child, but also for the mother.

“Even after little lord Brandon started to walk, he would still crawl his way through a room at times,” Old Nan continued.

Catelyn was not certain which Brandon Old Nan was talking about. The Brandon Stark she came to Winterfell to nurse, or the Brandon Stark Catelyn was betrothed to.

“Not  _your_  Brandon, m'lady,” Old Nan said, as if she had guessed what Catelyn was thinking, without even looking at her.

Catelyn flushed. “He … he wasn't  _my_  Brandon. We were only betrothed, not -”

“The Brandon  _you_  knew, is what I mean. Now  _that_  Brandon was running before he even knew how to crawl.”

An exaggeration, most certainly, but Catelyn thought the description fitted Ned's older brother well. “What about -”

 _My Ned_ , she wanted to say.

“- Arya's father?” she asked instead. “How old was he when he started to walk?”

“Come to think of it, he was not walking yet at this age. Like father, like daughter, m'lady,” Old Nan replied, smiling her toothless smile. “But it will not be long now. She'll walk soon, I'm sure of it.”

Catelyn nodded. Arya could already stand up. The first step would not be long in coming.

Arya had made her way back to her mother again. Wrapping her hands around her mother's legs, she stood up, unassisted, tottering unsteadily for a short while, before her feet were planted firmly on the ground. Catelyn resisted the urge to pick her daughter up and bury her in her embrace.

Arya looked up at her mother, smiling her own almost toothless grin. Her hold on her mother's legs was slackening.

 _Don't let go,_  Catelyn prayed, with one breath.

 _Let go. Let go and take your first step_ , she prayed, with the next breath.

Arya let go. She was standing up, steadily, on her own two feet, not holding on to anything. Catelyn moved back a few steps, putting a little distance between herself and her daughter. Holding out her hands as if trying to catch her mother, Arya finally took her first step. And her next. Until she reached her mother, and was buried in Catelyn's embrace.

 


	12. Chapter 12

Lyanna found her niece in the godswood, staring intently at the black waters of the pool by the heart tree, as if searching for her own reflection.   

“It’s not fair,” Arya said, near tears, as her aunt took a seat beside her on the mossy stone. “I tried my best, but my stitches still came out crooked. Septa Mordane didn’t believe me. She said I never tried my best, and I certainly never tried as hard as Sansa did, because I don’t care at all about becoming a proper lady, and I only care about running wild and doing as I please. That’s not true! I tried my best, I really did! I don’t like needlework, not the way I like riding, but I still try my best, every time. But she didn’t believe me, when I tried to tell her that.”

Lyanna placed a comforting hand on Arya’s shoulder. Arya turned her head, staring at her aunt with imploring eyes. “You believe me, don’t you, Aunt Lya?” she asked.

“Of course I believe you,” replied Lyanna, pulling Arya closer, embracing the girl fiercely. “Septa Mordane doesn’t know everything. She’s not right all the time, I’ve told you that before.”

“ _’Why couldn’t you try harder, like Sansa? Why couldn’t you be more like your sister?_ ’ Septa Mordane says, and I know she’s not the only one who thinks that.”

“You shouldn’t have to be like Sansa, and Sansa shouldn’t have to be like you. You are you, and Sansa is Sansa.”

Arya sighed. “I wish Sansa is not so perfect, so good at everything.”

“You’re good at things too, just  _different_  things.”

“But they’re all the  _wrong_  things! They are not the things girls are supposed to be good at.”    

“That doesn’t make those things worthless, and it doesn’t make it wrong for you to be good at them.”

“I know they are not worthless. They are considered  _amazing_  things,  _wonderful_  thing, when _boys_  do them. But they are not considered amazing and wonderful anymore, when girls do them. When  _girls_  do them, it’s as if those things  _magically_  stop being amazing and wonderful. Why should that be? It’s not fair!” exclaimed Arya. “First we’re told – girls must only learn how to sew, not how to sword-fight. And then they call us weak because we don’t know how to fight. How are we supposed to know, if we’re not allowed to learn?”

Her niece was discovering the box, thought Lyanna. The box, which was sometimes disguised as a pedestal, where women were placed and told to stay put. If they left the box, or stepped off from that sham pedestal, then they would be excoriated for not behaving the way women should properly behave, for being presumptuous enough to believe that they did not have to remain in their proper place. But if they remained inside that box, then they were viewed with contempt, as weakly creatures who were less than men – less strong, less worthy, less valuable.

You were punished either way. Punished for trying to escape, and punished for staying in place. Punished for breaking the rules, and punished for following the rules. Punished for not being what the world claimed you must be, and punished for being everything the world claimed you had to be. At Arya’s age, Lyanna had not yet grasped this quandary. At fourteen, when Rhaegar first made his move, she still did not fully realize its implication.

Rhaegar paid lip service to her dreams and her aspirations, and tried to flatter her with words such as –  _you are so very different from the ladies I see at court, who only seem interested in gossips and frivolities._  The flattery she had never taken seriously, but the lip service he paid to her dreams and her aspirations she had mistakenly believed to be sincere. She took him for  a kindred spirit, another captive longing to escape from the box the world had forced him into, and she completely missed the fact that  _he_  was trying to put  _her_  inside a box of his own making.

Her nieces would not grow to be as naïve as she once was, vowed Lyanna. Rising to her feet, she held out her hand to Arya and said, “Let’s find your sister. I have a story to tell, to the both of you.”  


	13. Chapter 13

  _Love is whatever you can still betray, he thought. Betrayal can only happen if you love. (A Perfect Spy, John le_ _Carré_ _)_

* * *

 

_This is not what we planned, not what we promised each other we would do. You lied to me. You betrayed me._

His fingers began stroking her face.  _I lied to you because I love you._

She pushed his hand away.  _Don’t. Don’t you dare talk of love. After the way you betrayed me, how could you even speak about love?_

_I betrayed you because I love you. I betrayed you to make you more than what you ever thought possible. You will be more than just Rickard Stark’s daughter, more than just Robert Baratheon’s woman. Isn’t that what you have always dreamed of? You will be honored and beloved for all eternity. You will be remembered as the mother of heroes, the mother of saviors of the world. Isn’t that better than merely helping a few unfortunate souls here and there, than merely being a knight errant? I lied to you because I love you, because you, more than any other woman, deserve this honor._

_Honor?!_  She slapped him, hard.

He sighed.  _My dear Lyanna. My sweet child. My love. One day, you will understand. You will understand how much I love you._

The look on his face – the long-suffering, forgiving, understanding look of a prophet preaching to the unbelievers, to the not-yet-converted – made her want to claw her own face, after clawing  _his_  face.  

How had she not seen this, seen _him_ , the real him? Was it willful blindness on her part? Had she, out of her desperation and poverty of choices, created a completely different version of him,  fleshed out from the skeletons of her own needs, wishes and desires?

 _One day, you will understand how much I love you,_ he repeated, over and over again, a constant refrain, a never-ending song, as he acted out his twisted and treacherous version of love.

She refused to understand. She refused to believe in his self-serving definition of love. She refused to consent to this  _delusion_  of love.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These drabbles were originally posted in other drabble collections. I’m doing some housekeeping and rearranging things.

**Robb Stark & Ned Stark, footsteps **

“Where is the honor in hiding the truth?” he had asked his father once, seemingly in regard to other people and other things that were separate, distinct and unrelated to their family. But perhaps his father had known what he was truly asking, after all.

“There are many different kinds of honor,” Ned Stark had replied to his son. “Our own, of course. But also other people’s. Where is the honor in sullying someone else’s honor in order to keep our own’s intact? ”

Robb had understood, without asking all the questions he had really wanted to ask. And he finally saw, too, another unspoken truth, that it was not his place to ask those questions of his father in the first place. His mother had that right, yes. And Jon, most certainly. But not Robb. It was a dance between the three of them – Ned Stark, his wife, and the bastard son he had brought home to Winterfell – and no one else.

His father had once lain with a woman not his wife, and did the only thing he thought he could. Ned Stark could not have married Jon’s mother – he was already married – but he raised the child from that union alongside his true-born children, and kept the woman’s identity a secret, even from the wife he had wronged.

_I am not married, not like my father was._

_You are betrothed._

_A betrothal is not a marriage._

_Just as good. It is a binding promise. Where is the honor in breaking that promise?_

_Where is the honor in sullying Jeyne’s honor? _  

_You should have thought of that before you bedded her._

_I was grieving. Bereft. In need of comfort. She was kind and gentle. She was – _

The raging argument he was conducting with himself was pointless. In the end, just as he knew he would have to do from the start, he chose Jeyne’s honor over his own, just as his father had once chosen Jon’s mother’s honor over _his_ own.

**___________________**

**For the prompt: Ned Stark & Stannis Baratheon, honor **

_It’s set in an AU where Robert finds out about Jon’s true parentage._

_********_

“Do you bring words from Robert?”

“Not words. A question. The same question he’s been asking all along. Where have you hidden the boy? Rhaegar’s boy.”

“Lyanna’s boy too. My sister’s boy.”

“So you chose blood over your king. The king to whom you have sworn an oath of loyalty.”

“So did you, Stannis. You chose blood over your duty to King Aerys when you took Robert’s side in the war. We are not so different, you and I.”

“I never pretended to be Aerys’ closest companion and confidante, before stabbing him in the back. You hid the boy in plain sight as your bastard for many years. He must be somewhere close now, a place we would least expect for the sheer conspicuousness of it.”

“Jon. His name is Jon. He could be a thousand leagues away across the ocean by now.”

“Robert will not forgive you this betrayal. Not for all the love he holds for you, not for all your shared joy and laughter in the Vale.”

“I ask nothing for myself. I will accept my king’s punishment. But my wife and my children … they have not committed any crime. They know nothing of Jon’s true origin. Robert’s word of honor that they will not be harmed, that they will not be punished for my sin, that is all I ask.”

“Honor? Do you not fear that my brother will throw that back in your face? Where was your honor when you deceived your king, he might ask? Where was your honor when you deceived your wife? You who prided yourself on your sense of honor.”

“I was protecting my sister’s honor. And honoring the promise I made to her, on her deathbed. Have you not had to choose, Stannis? Between one duty and another? You who prided yourself on your sense of duty.”

“So you chose your sister’s honor over your own. What about your wife’s honor? Shamed by a husband who betrayed her with another woman, forced to live under the same roof with the fruit of that betrayal.”

“That is between us, my wife and I. My sin in that regard is towards Catelyn, not Robert, not you. Strip away the rest of it – honor, duty, any other principle we may wish to lay claim to – and the crux of the matter is this: I chose to protect the life of an innocent child from your brother. We both know what your brother is capable of.”

**___________________**

**For the prompt: Ned Stark returning Arthur Dayne’s sword Dawn to his sister Ashara.**

She was heavy with child, the lady Ashara. Ned’s eyes could not fail to register this. Wartime marriages were common – his own union with Catelyn had been arranged hastily after Brandon’s death – but Ned had not heard any news that Ashara Dayne was wed. But that was hardly his affair. He came here for a different matter.

“How did my brother die?” she asked, her eyes never meeting his own.

“He died … he died doing his duty as a Kingsguard,” Ned replied, choosing his words very carefully.

Ashara  waited.

“He was slain in single combat,” Ned continued.

She continued to wait, pressing him, silently.

“I killed him,” Ned said, finally.

She closed her eyes tightly, but no tears came. “What was Arthur doing at Tower of Joy?”

“Guarding my sister Lyanna, on Rhaegar Targaryen’s order.”

She opened her eyes, those haunting violet eyes, the same shape and color as her brother’s eyes. Ned had stared into Arthur Dayne’s eyes as he was dying. “Bring my sword home to my sister. Tell Ashara I am sorry,” the man had said with his dying breath.

Ashara Dayne was paying her brother’s sword Dawn scant attention, however. “Is your sister safe, at least?” she asked Ned.

Ned shook his head, but was too overcome with grief to say a word.

Ashara was startled. “Arthur didn’t … he didn’t harm your sister, did he?”

“No,” Ned replied swiftly. “Lyanna … she died of a fever.”

Childbed fever, but Ned had promised Lya that this would be their secret forever.

Ashara rose and walked to the window, staring out to sea. “Arthur was the Sword of the Morning, and now dusk has set on all of us. My baby will be born without a father.”

Ned was not certain he had heard correctly. He cleared his throat. “The father is –“

“The Targaryens wed brothers and sisters for thousands of years,” Ashara said, her tone defensive.

“It is not my place to judge, my lady,” Ned replied softly.

“We loved each other, Arthur and I, despite his vows.” She was weeping now, the tears coming down furiously, as if a floodgate had suddenly been forced to open.

 “He wanted me to tell you that he is sorry,” Ned said.

“He is forgiven.”

“I am sorry for your loss, my lady. More than I can say.”

 “You are forgiven too, Lord Stark.”

**___________________**

**3-sentence fic, for the prompt: Jon Snow/Stannis Baratheon, Vietnam War AU**

In one of their rare moments of intimacy, Jon had asked the Colonel what it had been like fighting a good war where nothing was murky and uncertain, where the line between good and evil was clearly drawn in the sand, where the words  _My Lai_  and  _massacre_  had not yet been combined to enter the lexicon as the atrocity committed by American soldiers.

The Colonel had laughed in Jon’s face, calling him out for his naiveté – for what were the aerial bombing of Dresden and the atomic cloud over Hiroshima and Nagasaki if not massacres in a grander scale – and in any case, they were foot soldiers, the Colonel and Jon, not politicians or statesmen, and their duty  _was_  clear, even if the conduct of war was much less so.

Jon admired the Colonel’s steadfast and unwavering sense of duty even amidst his lost idealism and his growing cynicism, the Colonel’s determination to soldier on in the face of a world that he believed had gone wrong a long time ago, but in truth, Jon could not share the Colonel’s worldview, could not live with the resultant deep-seated anger and bitterness.  

 


	15. Chapter 15

> _Lord Alaric had lost his wife three years earlier. When the queen expressed regret that she had never had the pleasure of meeting Lady Stark, the northman said, “She was a Mormont of Bear Isle, and no lady by your lights, but she took an axe to a pack of wolves when she was twelve, killed two of them, and sewed a cloak from their skins.” (excerpt from Fire and Blood)_

“Mind that she does not take an axe to  _your_  head, Alaric.”

“Or wear your skin as her cloak.”

“She’s a  _Mormont_ , not a Bolton,” said Alaric, through clenched teeth. He had had enough of his brothers and cousins and their endless teasing about the woman he was betrothed to.  _Humorless_ , his brothers and cousins often said of him, but who in their right mind could find the humor in such tedious, not the least amusing and all too predictable jests? If being deemed  _humorless_  was the price he had to pay for his unwillingness to laugh himself stupid at every silly little jape, then so be it. In his judgment, even humor must rise to a particular standard to be worthy of the label  _humorous_ , for otherwise, what was the point of it?

His brothers and cousins broke into a song, each adding the next verse, all of them barely able to contain their rowdy and unruly laughter.   

“The Girl Who Slew The Wolf …“

“… In Her Wedding Bed …”

“… And Wore Him As A Cloak …“

“… To Warm Her Chilly Bones …”

“… In The Cold, Cold Nights …”

“… Of Winter At Winterfell.”

“Her name,” pronounced Alaric, with great emphasis, “is Jorelle Mormont. And I hope you do not intend to dishonor her by singing that atrocious song at our wedding.”

“It would made a great ditty for the bedding ceremony,” said Alaric’s youngest brother.

“I forbid it! I forbid it absolutely!”

 “Come now, Alaric, there’s no need to act like a fierce she-bear protecting her cubs. The jest is not made at your betrothed’s expense.”

_At whose expense, then? Mine?_

During the bedding ceremony, none of the men who undressed Jorelle Mormont and carried her to her wedding bed dared said a word of protest as she snatched a bearskin cloak from the arms of her trailing sister to cover her nakedness.  

Alaric’s stern and solemn expression hid a burgeoning smile.  _Did she kill that bear too, like those wolves she made into a cloak?_  he imagined his brothers and cousins warily wondering. Faced with the reality of Jorelle Mormont, confronted by this wolf-slayer in the flesh-and-blood, all their previous japes and jests melted away as swiftly as snowflakes touched by fire.

When they were finally left alone in their bedchamber, the first thing Jorelle said to Alaric was, “You have nothing to fear from me tonight, husband. Those were regular wolves I slew and sewed into a cloak, not direwolves.”

Alaric laughed and laughed, loudly and boisterously, as he had never laughed before.


End file.
